Summary: 1
Complex biological memory conceptualized as
an abstract communication system -human
long term memories grow in complexity during
sleep and undergo selection while awake
Bruce G Charlton and Peter Andras
School of Biology and Psychology and School of Computing Science, University of
Newcastle, Newcastle upon TYne, NE1 7RU, UK
1.1 Summary
Biological memory in humans and other animals with a central nervous system
is often extremely complex in its organization and functioning. A description
of memory from the perspective of complex systems may therefore be useful
to interpret and understand existing neurobiological data and to plan future
research. This summary section summarizes our results, which are explained
in more details in the following sections.
We define systems in terms of communications. A system does not include
the communication units ('CUs') that produce and receive communications.
A dense cluster of inter-referencing communications surrounded by rare set
of communications constitutes a communication system. Memory systems are
based on communication units that are more temporally stable than the CUs